Three months after the flight of the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany now present unique insights into the central layer of the Sun's ...

(Phys.org) —The most luminous galaxies in our universe are not particularly bright in the visible. Most of their energy output (which can be hundreds or even thousands of times more than our Milky Way's) is emitted at infrared ...

Optical fibers are now delivering ultrafast internet connections to homes across the world. By replacing electronics-based technologies with architectures that process pulses of light, a similar leap in speed might also be ...

(Phys.org) —Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of such objects was discovered by researchers using NASA's WISE space telescope. However, until now no one ...

Engineers working in the nanoscale will have a new tool at their disposal thanks to an international group of researchers led by Drexel University's College of Engineering. This innovative procedure could alleviate the persistent ...

Nano technologists at the University of Twente research institute MESA+ have, for the first time, demonstrated quantum effects in tiny nanowires of iridium atoms. These effects, which occur at room temperature, are responsible ...

A team of researchers at the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), the University of Maryland, and the California Institute of Technology have demonstrated optical wavelength conversion using interactions ...

Wavelength

In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave – the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a characteristic of both traveling waves and standing waves. Wavelength is commonly designated by the Greek letter lambda (λ). The concept can also be applied to periodic waves of non-sinusoidal shape. The term wavelength is also sometimes applied to modulated waves, and to the sinusoidal envelopes of modulated waves or waves formed by interference of several sinusoids.

Assuming a sinusoidal wave moving at a fixed wave speed, wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency: waves with higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths, and lower frequencies have longer wavelengths.

Examples of wave-like phenomena are sound waves, light, and water waves. A sound wave is a periodic variation in air pressure, while in light and other electromagnetic radiation the strength of the electric and the magnetic field vary. Water waves are periodic variations in the height of a body of water. In a crystal lattice vibration, atomic positions vary periodically in both lattice position and time.

Wavelength is a measure of the distance between repetitions of a shape feature such as peaks, valleys, or zero-crossings, not a measure of how far any given particle moves. For example, in waves over deep water a particle in the water moves in a circle of the same diameter as the wave height, unrelated to wavelength.